


through Rose-colored glasses

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, happy ending guaranteed, i guess this counts as, reylo through rose's eyes, reylo throughout but ben barely appears go figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 12:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16408223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: The first time Rose ever hears about her new friend Rey's husband is when Finn and Poe tell her that Rey's asked him for a divorce.ORRey and Ben drift apart and then find their way back to each other. Rose watches the whole thing unfold.





	through Rose-colored glasses

On Monday, Rose arrives at work only to stumble upon perhaps _the_ most worrying sight she’s encountered in her four months at Resistance.

“Is Rey okay?” she asks Finn and Poe in a hushed whisper, going to painstaking lengths to be as quiet as possible as she settles in next to the woman in question and slowly sets up her workstation for the day. There’s something unnerving about seeing her colleague slumped over her desk like this, face hidden in the cradle of her arms. Rey isn’t exactly the ball of sunshine her office nickname would suggest – her energy levels fluctuate wildly depending on her caffeine intake, just like anyone else – but Rose has never seen her be anything less than completely alert, even that one time they all stayed until midnight to work out some kinks in their project. _Old habits_ , Rey had shrugged when Rose first marveled at her constant sharpness. _Some instincts never go away._

Finn and Poe share a long look before the former sighs and tells her, “She’s completely drained. Her husband flew in yesterday.”

Under any other circumstances, that little tidbit of information might have warranted an eyebrow waggle. But Rose isn’t _that_ socially maladjusted – she knows how to read a room well enough, thank you very much – plus she’s way too blindsided to do anything other than ask, “Husband? I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone.”

Come to think of it, there’s a _lot_ about Rey’s life that she doesn’t know, despite the fact that the woman has been a constant source of support for her ever since Rose moved to Chandrila. But it’s one thing not to know Rey’s favorite color; not knowing that she’s _married_ is a whole other beast entirely. “Why doesn’t she ever-?”

Finn clears his throat a little too loudly, bites down on the side of his mouth for a bit before he says, “It’s complicated. She doesn’t like talking about it.”

Poe goes a step further and tells her, “She asked him for a divorce last night.”

“ _Poe-_ ” Finn hisses in reproach.

“What? It’s _Rose_. Rey won’t mind,” Poe claims confidently.

Beside Rose, the woman in question sleeps on. She sneaks guilty glances at Rey as she asks the guys for more details, and they paint her a picture of college sweethearts slowly, painfully torn apart by jobs on opposite ends of the country and the stress of a long-distance relationship.

“I think we all saw this coming, but at the same time…” Finn shakes his head and trails off with a heavy sigh as his lips press into a thin line.

“No one could’ve seen this coming,” Poe disagrees. “I mean, this is _Rey and Ben_ we’re talking about. They’re the stuff of fairy tales. If even they can’t make it-”

Rose startles as a hoarse voice beside her croaks, “You do realize I can hear you guys, right?”

Poe jumps slightly and immediately abandons his train of thought as all three of them turn to see Rey slowly lift her head to reveal bloodshot eyes and cracked lips. Rey’s never been overly fussed about her appearance or bothered with makeup, but Rose can honestly say she’s never seen her friend this disheveled – no, not even that one time they all got wasted at Poe’s birthday party and the entire department shuffled into work the next morning with raging hangovers and misery etched all over their faces.

“I’m sorry, Peanut,” Finn says, the first to break the silence. “How are you feeling? Still sure you don’t want me to track the idiot down and-”

Rey winces as Finn pounds his fists together in an unspoken threat, and Poe lands a punch on Finn’s arm, shakes his head at the younger man with a heaviness in his motions that Rose would never have thought to associate with Poe Dameron.

“Don’t,” he hisses at Finn just as Rey abruptly pushes back from the desk and stumbles out of her chair.

“I’m just- I’m going to the bathroom,” Rey mutters, and doesn’t spare any of them a glance before she’s stalking away from the team’s quiet little corner. Her shoulders start to shake before she disappears from sight, and it takes every last bit of Rose’s willpower for her _not_ to run after Rey and offer her help. Rey was there for her when she first adjusted to life in the big city without Paige or any other familiar faces and Rose would do anything to return that kindness, but this is obviously a highly personal situation best handled by the people who’ve known Rey for years.

A beat, and then- “I’ll go,” Finn murmurs, and Rose watches him scurry after his best friend.

“Is Rey going to be okay?” she asks as Poe settles into his chair with a sigh and starts tapping away at his laptop.

Poe stills, and Rose notes the way his shoulders slump with a sinking feeling in her gut. “I don’t know,” he finally admits, and the lost look in his eyes when he turns to her is utterly out of place on her supervisor’s face. “No one does. They’ve been together for so long that it’s completely inconceivable to think of them apart. I think even Rey can’t picture it.”

 _But she’s the one who asked for the divorce, right?_ Rose almost asks, but even she knows that’s not how things work. She’s never really been in love, not the kind of love Rey and her husband apparently have, but she knows it’s not something to be thrown aside lightly, not something you can get over just like that. For Rey, who loves her friends fiercely and never gives up on anything, to even consider this…

“Poor Rey,” she murmurs, and vows to do everything within her power to help her friend through this.

 

* * *

 

On Wednesday morning, she arrives at work for the second day in a row to find Rey hidden from sight.

To improve team coordination and cohesion or something along those lines, the teams at Resistance share a workspace instead of having individual cubicles. When Rose first arrived, Poe likened it to a family all sitting down together at the dining table to help prepare dinner – _things just work better when we’re all up to date on what and how the others are doing,_ he’d shrugged. _Besides, it beats staring at a wall all day._ But every once in a while, when one of them is working on a deadline, there’s a clip-on desk divider to help them block out the rest of the world.

Before this week, Rose could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen that divider in use since she first started working here, and she’d never seen it in place for more than two hours.

Rey clipped it on sometime after lunch on Monday and hasn’t taken it down since.

When she turns to the guys, Finn merely shakes his head in helpless dismay while Poe gives her one of those sad smiles she’s getting too familiar with.

“Good morning,” Rose says tentatively as she sits down next to Rey, and is honestly surprised when she hears a quiet _morning_ over the felt walls of the divider. A dozen questions come to mind, but she doesn’t push her luck, choosing instead to get right to work.

The team works in silence all morning, the three of them trading hushed murmurs whenever they have to consult each other. Rey speaks up every now and then when it concerns her part of the project, and there’s no doubt that she’s been hard at work behind that divider of hers.

Too hard, maybe.

“She’s always been like that,” Finn shrugs when the two of them head to the break room for coffee. “Throws herself headfirst into work and drowns in it so that she can avoid everything else. I think she wrote the best paper of her life when she and Ben had their first fight as a couple,” he recalls with a chuckle, only to abruptly fall into silence when he remembers the situation at hand.

“Did they…?” Rose asks hesitantly, still trying to navigate the murky waters of office-based friendships and figure out where exactly the line is drawn.

Finn beats her to it. “Fight a lot?” he guesses. “Nope. Before this, I think they’d only ever had two major fights. The one in college was about where they saw themselves in five years’ time, and then there was one about money shortly after they got married – Ben’s always had a lot, Rey didn’t have that much, and they both had strong ideas on how the bills should be split,” Finn kindly explains when he catches sight of Rose’s wrinkled brow. “That’s about it, really. Two fights in seven years. But ever since Ben moved…”

Poe pokes his head into the break room, two jackets on his right arm and a heavy backpack slung over his left shoulder. “Finn, hurry up. We’ve got that lunch meeting with Holdo in fifteen minutes. She wants to meet at Maz’s.”

“Shit, I forgot,” Finn curses, and the two of them bid Rose a quick goodbye before they rush out of the office. She takes her time preparing her coffee, and decides to bring Rey a cup as well.

“Hey,” Rose says gently as she places her own cup on her table, “I brought you some coffee.”

Rey pushes back from her desk and rolls into sight with a soft smile on her face as she reaches for her cup. “Thanks, Rose.”

“You’re welcome,” she beams, happy to note the lack of tear stains on Rey’s cheek. Her next words are a gamble, but– “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve made the worst mistake of my life,” Rey promptly replies before she blows on her steaming coffee. “I know it’s the right thing to do. It _is_ ,” she insists, more for her own benefit than anyone else’s. “But…”

Rose turns her chair around to fully face Rey, and does her best to look open and supportive.

“It’s just… It was okay, at first. I mean, it was hell on us and I missed him every day, but I knew he was happy, happier than he’d been in a long time, so it was worth it,” Rey says, a small smile on her face as her eyes grow distant. “Consulting just… fits him. Ben’s always needed instant results to quantify his worth, to prove that he’s bringing something to the table. Working for First Order, incubating and troubleshooting – it was perfect for him… at first.”

“What happened?” Rose asks after a beat, allowing Rey to gather her thoughts.

“Snoke happened,” she declares flatly. “When the time came for Ben to come home, he freaked out, said Ben was wasting his potential here in Chandrila. He offered Ben a huge raise and a significant promotion – _too good to pass up on_ , apparently,” Rey scoffs, an unfamiliar bitterness seeping into her voice. “So Ben agreed and told me it would just be one more year. I wasn’t _happy_ about it, but I didn’t hate the idea either; he was still so happy and fulfilled, and I didn’t want to take that from him. But then the promotion came with more and more deskwork, and the next thing Ben knew he was in charge of management and funding instead of any actual consulting or incubating. God, he’s been _miserable_ ever since.”

Rose frowns. “Then why-”

“Contract,” Rey shrugs. “It was easier for him to just wait the year out rather than trying to mess with the contract. So he did – _we_ did – and then when it was finally time for him to come home, Snoke pulled another fucking card up his sleeve, put Ben in charge of basically half the company. And now…” Rey sighs, and Rose watches her friend wilt right before her very eyes. “Now he’s saying that if Ben stays for another two years, he’ll be on track to become the next CEO.”

One of the guys had mentioned Ben’s company in passing – a multi-million tech incubator called First Order – and Rose knows that’s nothing to sneeze at. Even the _possibility_ of being considered to lead the company is a huge deal. But it can’t be worth the pain in Rey’s eyes right now; nothing could possibly be worth causing that kind of hurt to your wife.

“The thing is, if he wanted this… if he were still happy…” Rey says slowly, heavily. “I’d be okay with it. I mean, it sucks and I miss him so much it hurts sometimes, but if he’s happy then I’m happy, you know?” she shrugs. “But I _know_ he’s not happy, I know he’d be better off coming back here. I’m here, and his family’s here, all our friends are here… our whole _life_ is here, and he’s off being miserable in Coruscant while I’m all alone in the house we bought to raise a family and grow old together in.”

Rey makes a strangled little sound, and Rose realizes that she’s choking on a sob. She reaches forward to take the coffee out of Rey’s hand, puts it on the table before she toes her chair closer to Rey’s and reaches out with open arms.

“Oh, honey,” Rose sighs as Rey falls into her arms, and tries her best to replicate the way Paige cards soothing fingers through her hair whenever she’s upset. “It’s going to be okay, Rey. You’re going to be okay.”

But as Rey breaks down in her arms, she thinks of what Poe told her on Monday and starts to see what he was talking about.

 

* * *

 

On Friday, Finn arrives at work and heads straight for Rey’s corner with single-minded determination, and Rose gasps as she watches him wrench away the desk divider.

“We’re going out tonight,” he declares. “No excuses, no exceptions. You _need_ this.”

He crosses his arms and taps one foot against the hardwood floor while he stares Rey down, and Rose locks eyes with Poe to find that he’s watching the situation unfold with bated breath just like her.

The seconds tick by, and eventually Poe moves to break the tension when–

“Fine,” Rey gives in with a sigh. “But!” she holds up one finger before Finn can get ahead of himself. “No clubs. No raves. Nothing crazy. I just want to grab some drinks with my friends after a long week, okay?”

“Good enough,” Finn shrugs, and heads to his table. Rose leans over and taps a weary-looking Rey on the arm.

“I’ll keep him in line, I promise,” she assures Rey. “I’m thinking… Cantina?” It’s a bit rundown for Rose’s tastes, and certainly not Finn or Poe’s first pick, but Rey loves the place for some reason and Rose knows she’ll at least feel comfortable there.

“Rose Tico, you’re one of the good ones,” Rey whispers with a smile, possibly the brightest one she’s worn all week, and Rose beams at her in return before they go back to work.

The desk divider remains on the floor where Finn left it, and when the three of them ask Rey if she’d like them to bring anything back from lunch, she actually takes them up on their offer for the first time this week and requests a hearty meal that’s more in line with her usual tastes than the bits and pieces she’s been forcing herself to eat all week.

“I think she’s finally processed it,” Finn says a couple of hours after lunch, the three of them huddled together in the break room while Rey remains hard at work. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s going to be smooth sailing from here on out, but… it’s a start, right?”

Poe shrugs and Rose smiles, and it finally feels like things might actually go back to normal for their little team.

And then a tall, dark-haired man walks into the office and Rose watches in shock and confusion as Poe and Finn drop everything to chase after him and block him from making his way to their little corner, tucked away behind the wall located towards the back of the office.

Rose joins them just in time to hear the newcomer pleading–

“Guys, I need to talk to her, I have to do _something_ -”

“You’ve done enough, Solo,” Finn says with a glare, folding his arms over his chest. He and Poe stand shoulder-to-shoulder as if that’ll deter this absolute hulk of a man – seriously, how does Rey even look at him for extended periods of time? – from pushing past them. It’s an amusing sight, but the show of support for their friend warms Rose’s heart.

The man – _Ben_ , she realizes, the mysterious husband who’s completely devastated her friend – could easily push past them, send them both sprawling with a single shove.

He doesn’t, and she watches in awe as he crumples in on himself instead, his posture slumping into something defeated as his voice drops into a pained whisper. “Please, Finn, I’m here to fix this.”

Poe, who she’s learned is kind of a childhood friend of Ben’s, is significantly gentler than Finn when he says, “There’s only one way to fix this, Ben.”

“I know,” Ben sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “That’s why I’m here.”

It takes a while for Rose to catch up, but when Finn’s eyes widen at the implication of Ben’s words and he allows some of the tension to drain out of him, she realizes the magnitude of what’s going on here.

“Are you saying–?”

“Ben,” Poe chimes in, “did you–?”

“I want her to be the first to know,” Ben answers evasively before he takes a deep breath and looks at Finn and Poe. “She deserves that much, at least.”

Finn nods in agreement. “It shouldn’t have taken this long, man,” he says with a hint of admonishment in his voice, but steps aside anyway.

Ben drops his eyes to the ground as he murmurs, “I know.” Rose is struck by how much he resembles a kicked puppy right now, and suddenly understands what Rey meant when she said she could never be angry with him for long.

“You should never have let it get this far,” Poe adds.

Ben sighs. “I know, Poe. Trust me, I know. Can I please just…”

The two men share a look, and Poe steps further aside to make space for Ben as Finn reaches out and pats him on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

For no discernible reason, Rose allows impulse to propel her forward and plants herself between Ben and their corner.

“Rose Tico,” she says curtly, sticking her hand out as she draws herself to her full height and squares her shoulders.

“Um,” Ben’s forehead is creased with confusion as he shakes her hand. “Ben Solo. Who-”

“I’m a friend of Rey’s,” she explains. “And she means a lot to me.”

Ben smiles then, a soft thing she recognizes from watching Rey get lost in memories of happier times. “She means a lot to me too,” he says quietly.

It’s adorable – _they’re_ adorable, and Rose can’t wait to squeal all about this once they’ve worked things out and she gets to see them actually be the loved-up couple Finn and Poe consistently describe them as – but Rose pushes the thought aside for later and forces herself to focus. “Good,” she says, a little sharper than intended. “So you won’t hurt her again, right?”

Holding eye contact with Ben Solo is somehow more intimidating than she’d expected it to be, given that all she’s heard about the man has come from either his wife or his close friend, but Rose doesn’t waver until Ben nods and solemnly vows, “ _Never_ again.”

“Okay. Good,” Rose nods, and finally allows a smile to break through her tough façade. “Go for it, Ben.”

“Um, thanks… Rose,” he says somewhat hesitantly, but laughs at the situation all the same and throws a nervous smile over his shoulder at the three of them before he rounds the corner.

“Come on,” Poe hisses, and she feels a tug at her arm before she processes that he’s pulling both her and Finn closer to their workspace.

“Shouldn’t we give them some privacy?” Rose whispers as the guys hug the wall and lean forward ever-so-slightly to spy on their friends.

“Nope,” they say in perfect unison, and Finn reaches out to pull Rose forward just in time for her to witness Rey notice Ben’s presence.

“ _Ben_?” she whispers, and Rose strains to pick out the wonder and fear in her friend’s voice as she gapes at the unexpected sight of her husband.

Even more unexpected is the way Ben crumples at the sound of his wife’s voice, just… falls to his knees and presses his face to her stomach. From this distance all Rose can make out is a litany of “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” interspersed with other things she can’t quite catch.

Rey leans forward, curves almost protectively over her husband as she runs her fingers through his hair soothingly. There’s no mistaking when she finally hears what Ben has to say, her sharp gasp ringing out in the quiet space.

She slides down from her chair to kneel on the ground with Ben, and Rose feels happy tears trickling down her cheeks as she watches Rey throw herself into her husband’s arms with a sob. He holds her close, the both of them crying and smiling between kisses, and when Rose hears a quiet sniff it takes her a moment to realize that it didn’t come from her.

“What?” Finn snaps defensively when two pairs of eyes fall on him in disbelief. “I like a happy ending,” he adds, darting a hand up to his face to swipe at his tears.

“You sap,” Poe says with a roll of his eyes, but it doesn’t escape anyone’s notice that they’re suspiciously shiny. Finn calls him out on it, and the guys rib each other for a bit before they settle down.

Rose ignores them, and just smiles to herself as she watches the happy couple hold and heal each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is or where it came from, but at this point that's par for the course, right? I've got something planned for Halloween, so hopefully I'll be able to shake off this weird episode soon and get back to my normal writing style in time for that because this is getting ridiculous, really. Amazon reviews? Royals AU? And now this??? Oh well, at least it was fun to explore Rose's POV for a bit. Still a bit shaky on characterization, but I TRIED (and failed).
> 
> All the same, thank you for reading and I hope you liked it. As always, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below!


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